| Unreliable linguistic units (figurative words, idioms, metaphors, euphemisms, formulaic language, expressions) are considered critical components of real language. The understanding and use of unreliable linguistic units along with competency in the four language skills defines communicative competence in a second language. Due to the reliance on commercial materials in communicative classrooms, researchers investigated the use of real language in commercial texts. Findings were that commercial, adult English as a Second Language texts did not contain real language. To mitigate the lack of real language in commercial materials, researchers suggested that teachers incorporate frequent exposure to unreliable linguistic units. According to the Noticing Theory, frequent exposure to language input facilitates conscious noticing so input becomes intake. Unfortunately, there were no studies investigating the relative proportions of unreliable units in real language. Therefore, this study sampled four consecutive weeks of Wall Street Journal to find the average number of unreliable linguistic units contained in the news articles to compare with the average numbers of unreliable units contained in like articles from commercial ESL materials. Findings were that articles in commercial materials had significantly fewer number of linguistic units than the articles in the Wall Street Journal. Therefore practical recommendations are that commercial materials be supplemented with daily news. Research recommendations are: (1) determination of validity and generalization of adult topics in commercial materials, (2) verification that adult, ESL materials are not gender biased because of authors' assumptions, and (3) reconsideration of the validity and reliability of computer programs used to create collocation and corpus lists used as basis for commercial and classroom content. |
